Company type | Public |
---|---|
Industry | Data Processing |
Founded | 1950Santa Monica, California | in
Founders | Bernard Benson and George Lehner |
Fate | Acquired by United Gas Corporation in 1965 |
Benson-Lehner Corporation was an early digital technology company that initially made plotters and other input-output devices that were purchased by branches of the U.S. government during the Cold War. It later marketed high-speed precision cameras used for similar military applications, including nuclear bomb and missile testing. Benson-Lehner’s executives were almost entirely WW2 veterans. Its founders were Bernard Benson, a former British Spitfire pilot, and George Lehner, a UCLA psychology professor and inventor. Benson-Lehner was initially based in Santa Monica and had manufacturing plants in England and France. It was later headquartered in West Los Angeles and Van Nuys.
Benson-Lehner's primary business was producing and selling electronic plotting machines that would take tables of X and Y-coordinate data and plot them out on paper, providing a graphical representation of the data. [1] [2] [3] [4]
The company was acquired by United Gas Corporation in 1964 [19] to further that entity’s strategic interest in operating data processing centers for military and civil government agencies. [2] Benson retired to France, where he purchased a chateau in the Dordogne and became involved with world peace initiatives. He eventually donated his chateau to an order of Tibetan monks. [20]
Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Soviet scientist Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate. The technique has been variously known as "electrography", "electrophotography", "corona discharge photography" (CDP), "bioelectrography", "gas discharge visualization (GDV)", "electrophotonic imaging (EPI)", and, in Russian literature, "Kirlianography".
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Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. ERA became famous for their numerical computers, but as the market expanded they became better known for their drum memory systems. They were eventually purchased by Remington Rand and merged into their UNIVAC department. Many of the company founders later left to form Control Data Corporation.
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A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or (historically) a simulation such as an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in size to small desktop computers and have been rendered obsolete by the advent of the electronic calculator and the digital computer.
Max Palevsky was an American art collector, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and computer technology pioneer. He was known as a member of the Malibu Mafia – a group of wealthy American Jewish men who donated money to liberal and progressive causes and politicians.
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Bernard S. Benson was a British inventor and author.
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Wirgin was a German company which is still known for its brands Wirgin and Edixa, and for its camera types like the Edina, the Edinex or the Gewirette. It was based in the Hessian capital Wiesbaden and made a line of quite inexpensive 35mm SLRs from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the Edixa Reflex and Edixa-Mat Reflex. Wirgin was West Germany's main producer of SLRs with focal plane shutter. It also produced some of the lenses for its cameras, among them several M42 screw mount lenses.
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